Somethin's Cooking In The Kitchen

Here’s an idea for a TV show. We get Bruce Forsyth to solve world poverty, Lady Gaga to work in Iran with NATO’s nuclear disarmament inspectors, and then Nicholas Cage and Kerry Katona can lend their expertise to the next World Economic Forum at Davos to tidy up Third World debt. Good idea, eh?

Well, no, of course not. It’s a ridiculous idea, stupid and childish. Put it forward as a TV programme format and you would be, rightly, laughed out of the commissioner’s office and forced to watch boxed sets of Benidorm as punishment.

Yet this week we have the pleasure of Channel Four’s Jamie Oliver setting up a school to see if unteachable kids can be controlled, interested in education, and ultimately taught to love learning. So, forget about all the years of academic research and millions of pounds of analysis by the Department of Education, social scientists and university doctors struggling with their theses on education failure.

All we ultimately needed for the answer was a television cook.

Now Jamie seems a lovely bloke and his autograph proudly graces my kids’ playroom wall but, how can I put it? I repeat - he’s a flippin’ cook for goodness sake. A chef. He can surely tell you how to drizzle vinaigrette artistically on your Cos lettuce, make fluffy cous cous or cook pasta al dente, but run a school? What’s he qualified to do? Bin the frogs from Biology and have the students dissect wild guinea fowl instead? Returf the five a side pitches in lemongrass? Have the woodwork class make sculptures from polenta?

Perhaps he’d be happy if I ask our local sixth form college headmaster to work for a few weeks as chef of his restaurant in Kingston. It’s the same principle. No doubt we’ll get a book – Jamie’s Ten Minute School Makeover – and a themed restaurant out of it where noisy diners are given lines.

Nice fella but hopelessly out of his depth and remit. Mind you, I wish I had his agent.
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My older daughter watched the Spy Kids movie and was fascinated by the idea of retinal scanners for security. These devices check your unique eye print to see if you are who you say you are. Now she’s decided she wants one of these for access to her bedroom, but she hasn’t quite heard the name properly. She asked me if she could get a “rectal scanner” for her birthday.

Bottom line is I’ve said no.

Meantime my other daughter has started freaking out over recycling. She was all in favour until she picked up the new pack of toilet tissue from the supermarket and saw the recycled logo on the wrapper. “Does this mean the toilet paper’s been used before?” she asked with a horrified look.

Kids constantly make you laugh and then remember how innocent those years, long ago, really were. When I was a kid someone told me that a certain type of garden pebble had coins inside and I used to waste days trying to wear them away by rubbing them on the garden wall. I also believed I’d become a millionaire if I left home at six or seven but was back in my bedroom after five minutes because I didn’t know how where the bus stop was.

Life was simpler in those days as there were no retinal scanners or recycling ideas around then. But I guess nothing really changes. Perhaps technology is just today’s old stones with sixpences hidden inside.